Grand Rapids-based Meritage, which owns 107 Wendy’s in six states, is looking to fill 500 positions in its 48 restaurants around Michigan.

The company is hosting a job fair on Tuesday, May 21 from 2 to 5 p.m. at each Meritage-owned Wendy’s in Michigan, where managers will conduct open interviews for management and crew positions. (Call ahead to be sure the Wendy's near you is part of the event).

The hiring fair comes after some house cleaning among Wendy’s staffs throughout the company restaurants.

“We’ve had high turnover and a lot of problems with lack of professionalism,” said Lindsay Stone, marketing manager for Meritage. “We’ve redone our whole human resources on-boarding process.”

“We don’t want someone working there for a month,” she said. “We want quality employees that are going to be with us for the long run.”

Stone said each restaurant is looking for an average of 10 new employees in a mix of full- and part-time positions. There won’t be on-the-spot hires at the May 21 event. Prospective employees who get a call-back are likely to go through an aptitude test, said Stone. Pay rates will be negotiable based on position and experience, but crew positions are likely to start at minimum wage.

“It’s not a crazy SAT test,” she said. “We just want to make sure they have the basic skills for customer service, to operate machines in the kitchen, work the register, use simple math — things like that.”

Basically, “things employees in the past were lacking.”

“We seek to transform people’s idea of working in the quick service restaurant (QSR) industry,” said Gary Rose, Meritage chief operating officer.

An example of the new store design for Wendy's.Courtesy Photo

The new hiring process comes amid a system-wide image reinvention for the fast food chain, which includes new menu items, logos, staff uniforms, marketing language and even restaurant design.

Stone said Meritage is testing new store designs in Virginia and Georgia before rolling out the redesigns in Michigan.

The chain recently dropped it's "Old Fashioned Hamburgers" tagline for the new "Quality is our recipe," and has been advertising new menu items like the flatbread grilled chicken sandwich.

Part of the corporate "system revitalization," according to the Meritage website, includes fewer franchisees operating larger restaurant portfolios at "higher levels of sophistication."

Wendy’s executives have said they expect to revamp 200 company-owned and franchised restaurants in 2013, and have 20 percent of the whole system switched-over by 2015, roughly 750 company restaurants over the next three years, at a cost of up to $500 million.